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| Major Disturbance Events in Terrestrial Ecosystems Detected using Global Satellite Data Sets |
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C. Potter, P. Tan, M. Steinbach, S. Klooster, V. Kumar, V. Genovese, R. Myneni
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This study was conducted to evaluate patterns in an 18-year record of global satellite observations of vegetation phenology from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) as a means to characterize major ecosystem disturbance events and regimes. The fraction of photosynthetically active radiation (FPAR) absorbed by vegetation canopies worldwide has been computed at a monthly time interval from 1982 to 1999. Potential disturbance events were identified in the FPAR time series by locating anomalously low values (FPAR-LO) that lasted longer than 12 consecutive months at any 0.5 degree pixel. We found that nearly 400 Mha of the global land surface could be identified with at least one major FPAR-LO event over the 18-year time series. The majority of these potential disturbance events occurred in tropical savanna and shrublands or in boreal forest ecosystem classes. |
FPAR disturbance by year
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